Wow! It's been a hard 6 months working on guidance and HIL simulations and I haven't had time to even look up. What an exciting time it has been and is. During this time we made some new friends and we are about to help out another project and see if we cant get each other over the hump. There should be an announcement today at around 10pm PDT about our new partnership and all the exciting things we are doing! This is a big break for us at Team Prometheus! Stand by! This ones for real going to get your attention.

Go! N-Prise! And get ready for some noise coming your way! And hell yes we need your support! Help us spread the word! Because we really want to make this work for everyone.

Nanosatisfi is thrilled to announce that Team Prometheus has joined the ArduSat project to provide two high-altitude test flights of the Arduino payload, one using a stratospheric balloon and one atop a suborbital rocket!

The first flight, scheduled for late September, will carry the payload prototype and flight computer to an altitude of 100,000 feet (roughly 30 km) using a balloon, and will allow for testing of the payload and sensor performance, onboard data handling protocols, and communication systems.

The second flight, scheduled for October, will launch a new payload prototype and flight computer to an altitude of roughly 40 miles (64 kilometres) atop a balloon-launched rocket. The flight will allow for further testing of the payload performance, in particular the effectiveness of the Arduino thermal control, and the ability of the payload to withstand launch vibrations and G-loads.

Team Prometheus, founded in 2008, is a not-for-profit organization whose goal is to develop affordable access to space and promote DIY space projects. It is the brainchild of Monroe Lee King Jr., the amateur space exploration enthusiast who founded and developed MEC Computers Inc in 1990, and Aeronautic Enterprises in 2009. He is currently leading Team Prometheus on a number of projects, including the N-Prize, NASA Centennial Challenge, Carmack Micro-Challenge, and Google Lunar X-Prize (in collaboration with Team Frednet).

ArduSat is proud to welcome Team Prometheus to the project, and is looking forward to leveraging their expertise in DIY space to help make ArduSat a success!

ArduSat UpdateBoth ArduSat-1 and ArduSat-X have been successfully deployed from the ISS last month and are now in orbit . They were launched aboard the KOUNOTORI4 atop the H-IIB Launch Vehicle No. 4 from Japan last August.[ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIa1c28dFlc#t=2846

On October 27th, the ArduSat payload prototype was carried to 85,000 feet on a high-altitude balloon! During the flight, which took a little over two hours, the payload ran sample programs, ran tests on the sensors, and even snapped some pictures in the upper stratosphere. The launch was made possible thanks to the awesome guys at Edge Research Laboratory from Colorado Springs, who designed and built the balloon, provided all the tracking services, and even had a plane helping photograph and recover the payload after landing. We’ve posted the first few pictures from the flight on our Facebook and Twitter pages!

There’s also a great blog article from Sparkfun (one of our sponsors) here: http://www.sparkfun.com/news/996. Sparkfun also launched a balloon with Edge Research on the same day and managed to hit 125,000 feet (their payload was ¼ the weight)!

Originally, we had planned to launch from Austin Texas on September 22, but the flight had to be rescheduled when the launch provider found their helium tanks empty right before launch day and didn’t have enough time to get replacement gas before we had to fly back to San Francisco.

And this is how they solved the problem of testing their payload in near space conditions without having to rely on a launch provider:

Building some space in our lab – progress on the thermal vacuum chamber

As much fun as it is sending the payload into the stratosphere, we need an easier way to test how our electronics perform in the low pressure and temperature extremes they’ll see in space. To do this, we’ve been putting together a thermal vacuum chamber that will simulate orbital conditions, with the help from David Thiebert from Thibert Engineering Concepts.

As of this week, we’ve built the chamber, found and fixed a few small leaks around the seals, and have started testing off-the-shelf Arduinos in vacuum (we've put a few pictures on our Facebook / Twitter as well). Over the next few weeks we’ll be building the heating and cooling system to simulate temperature extremes in the vacuum, using simple resistive lamps to simulate the sun and a liquid-nitrogen-based cooling system to simulate cold deep space.

Congratulations again to the Nanosatisfi team for their successful project.